Hacker News Reader

Comment by vtbassmatt | Hacker News Reader

This was exactly my experience trying to buy an Apple Watch from the Apple Store just before the pandemic. I had done all the research ahead of time and knew exactly what I needed. “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.” But I know what I want and just need you to ring me up. “I’m sorry, 45 minutes.”

Hands down the strangest retail interaction I’ve ever had. Frustrated, I went to the Best Buy literally in the mall’s parking lot and was on my way in under 10 minutes with the watch I wanted. I guess Apple still won here since I bought the product anyhow?

View on HN

> “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.”

Ah, yes, the Ferrari customer experience. You need to be selected by the manufacturer to be allowed to buy their product. It makes the product feel rare and exclusive, and the customer feel "special", when it's a consumer product made by the same Chinese sweatshop workers that make your other e-waste.

Obligatory Futurama "there might be one left":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASUHbFEhWY

No, it’s just bad service, cargo culting the Steve Jobs Store move

I don’t think Steve Jobs would have tolerated that bullshit. He understood the customer better than that. Actually, this was his main talent.

Right, that’s literally what cargo culting means.

It’s making a surface level imitation of behaviors, without understanding the underlying reasons, hoping for the same effect.

So maybe Jobs might have made experiences that looked superficially similar to this, but he would’ve done it in a manner that actually understood the customer.

How meta. It appears I’m guilty of cargo culting the phrase “cargo cult”, since I superficially use it to describe really any modern form of tech fad following, all in an attempt to be hip with “modern” terms.

I think it’s more than that; I suspect that they have pretty onerous internal store processes about inventory control and device transfer to minimize employee theft.

Or perhaps they know what Costco and Walmart and every other store knows: “Increased dwell time correlates to increased sales.” I suspect that waiting for the “Ferrari Experience” is a side show to the very real effect that the longer you spend in their stores, the higher affinity you will have for their products, during that visit or future visits.

Surely that only works if you have a pleasant experience and linger willingly. Then you develop positive associations with the store and the products.

If you have a negative experience from being forced to wait, then that's a different animal. How many of us relish the idea of visiting the DMV after previously experiencing long lines?

And yet they were still one of the companies most noted for their onerous 'unpaid bag check' stuff.

At some point you either have to point to their inventory system being a problem, and/or them having a very low trust view of their employees, and it's the customers who get to waste their time as a result.

>Ah, yes, the Ferrari customer experience.

The difference here is that you can only get a Ferrari from a dealer. Apple products aren't exclusive to Apple stores, so driving away customers eager to shell out money doesn't seem optimal.

Tbh it may well be better to forgo their retail margin to get better placement in other stores. If an Apple store was the best place to buy them why would anyone else carry them?

Wait, you need an appointment to buy it?

No, you don’t. Perhaps those stores were overloaded, but I can easily walk into stores in East Bay and walk out with my products in a few minutes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com